Aircheck: KSLQ St. Louis "St. Louis After Dark" show December 1981

[spiritof67]

In St. Louis during the late 1970's and early 1980's finding contemporary jazz on the radio was a rarity. Aside from the once a week shows public radio offered (KWMU), and a few contemporary tracks thrown into a mainstream jazz show (WMRY), it was the AC stations that played the occasional hit by Chuck Mangione, Herb Alpert or Spyro Gyra. And that was basically it.

By 1981 longtime Top-40 KSLQ had shifted into an adult contemporary format, and began to position themselves on-air as "Adult Rock." While their regular format didn't offer much beyond the Kenny Rogers--Neil Diamond--Jackson Browne sound of the era, they did offer a show called "St. Louis After Dark." It made its debut in the fall of 1981, and ran from 10 PM to Midnight during the week. The program featured some of the light jazz that was being released at the time, mixed with some AC cuts the station was playing at the time.

Initially the show sounded promising, but the experiment didn't last long. By the spring of 1982, the show was heavily watered down and sounded mostly like their standard format (for some reason their PD at the time couldn't get enough of Loggins & Messina's "Angry Eyes" & "House At Pooh Corner," and Jackson Browne's "That Girl Could Sing"). By the summer of that year the show was dropped.

In December 1981 I recorded an hour of the show and recently digitized it for anyone interested. The files are 192/44.1 and can be found here:

http://www.4shared.com/mp3/qGvjUUtv/01-KSLQ_St_Louis_After_Dark_De.html

http://www.4shared.com/mp3/NfzJMpAJ/02-KSLQ_St_Louis_After_Dark_De.html

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

Thanks for posting these. Reminded me of WQXI-FM in Atlanta's "Jazz Flavors" which first showed up on Sunday evenings at 7P way back in 1978. WQXI-FM, or 94Q as we new it, was an adult rock/AC station. They continued Jazz Flavors for years, in the mid 1980s they ran it every night at 8PM until midnight. It ran until there was no more 94Q, which became today's CHR WSTR Star 94, and the program was dropped.

This was a great show, I learned to love modern jazz as a kid growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta in the 1980s. I would LOVE to find some recordings of this show. Russ Davis, who created the show, is now on Sirius/XM. I remember traveling g to NYC in the 1990s and he was at WQCD doing his magic there.

This was back when we had radio stations....